to the fact that the day was also the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock 260 years previously.

22. A fire, which resulted in the death of three children, took place in Montague Street, Whitechapel, originating in the workshop of a carpenter.

Seventeenth Conference of Headmasters held at Sherborne School, Dorset, and largely attended by the headmasters of the principal public schools.

23. Harrigan and Hart's Theatre, in Broadway, New York, commonly known as the Théâtre Comique, destroyed by fire. No lives were lost, there being no performance going on at the time.

At Chester an accountant named Stevens and a servant named Pugh were committed on the charge of having performed a mock marriage, although the victim, a farm girl, expressed her willingness to accept Pugh's offer, made in open court, to marry her.

At the Agricultural Hall, Islington, where an "Old English Fair” had been reproduced, after the type of Bartholomew or Stepney Fair, one of the caravans caught fire, and for a moment threatened the building with destruction. The fire brigade, however, were on the alert, and the fire was extinguished without extending to the adjoining booths.

25. Two vessels came into collision off the Eddystone Lighthouse, the steamship Chelydra, from Hiogo to Bremen, and the Norwegian barque Holmstrand, the steamer being cut amidships, and both going down within a few minutes. The crew of the steamer were picked up and landed at Plymouth in the evening, but nothing was heard of the crew of the Holmstrand for another day, when they also were picked up and brought safe to land.

Two shocks of earthquake distinctly felt in Madrid, but no damage was done in the capital. In Andalusia, however, especially in the neighbourhood of Malaga, there was great destruction of life and property. The town of Albunuelas, near Granada, was laid in ruins; and at Arenas del Rey the damage was very serious. The lowest estimate gave 300 lives lost, whilst others were as high as 1,000. At Periana, in the province of Malaga, a landslip of a mountain took place, involving the neighbouring inhabitants in frightful disaster. The façade of the cathedral of Granada was damaged, and the Giralda at Seville also showed traces of the violence of the shocks.

26. The financial panic at Vienna, which had led already to the suicide of two bank officials, and of Laibach the director, brought about the collapse of the firm Woltitz Brothers, corn-dealers. After an interview with their creditors, the brothers took a cab and drove to Heimberg, where they had offices. The clerks heard soon after one report of a pistol, and entering into the room found the two brothers quite dead, and near them two revolvers, of each of which one barrel had been discharged.

27. No less than ten lives lost in South-West Lancashire alone by accidents on the ice.

In consequence of the commercial depression affecting the metal trade, the steel works of Messrs. Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., at Eston, closed for an indefinite period.

27. H.M.S. Seahorse left Strome Ferry for Valtos, in the island of Lewis; and by a combination of skill and secrecy, and a display of force (about eighty marines), nine of the principal ringleaders in the "deforcement case were arrested, and in spite of the excitement aroused were successfully carried off to the mainland.

29. Swakeleys, a fine old Jacobean manor-house at Ickenham, near Uxbridge, built by Sir Edmund Wright, Lord Mayor in 1638, narrowly escaped destruction by fire, the ball-room and one valuable picture being totally destroyed. Harrington, the regicide, had at one time been the owner of Swakeleys, and by him it was sold to Sir Robert Vyner, to whom Pepys paid a visit in 1665.

The Queen gave her consent to the engagement of her daughter the Princess Beatrice with Prince Henry of Battenberg, third son of Prince Alexander of Hesse, with the condition that the Prince and Princess should reside in England, and in close proximity to Her Majesty.

Mrs. Gibbons, who had been convicted of the murder of her husband at Hayes, respited, and her sentence commuted to penal servitude for life. The Queen conferred the ribbon of St. Patrick on Lords Annaly and Monteagle, and that of the Grand Cross of the Bath on Lord Aberdare. 30. At the Dorothea Quarry, Nantill, near Carmarthen, a great fall of rock killed seven men instantaneously, and seriously injured others.

Fresh shocks of earthquake at various intervals reported from the South of Spain. At the town of Alhama upwards of a thousand houses were reported to be in ruins, and several other towns in the provinces of Malaga and Granada suffered almost as severely. The loss of life was estimated at upwards of one thousand.

Lord Wolseley's advance guard under Sir Herbert Stewart (a camel corps) started from Korti on its march across the desert to Shendy, and General Earle almost simultaneously left Abu Hamad to punish the Monassir tribe.

31. Two serious fires, one at Peckham and the other in Clare Market, occurred, and in each case four lives were lost, the flames getting possession of the buildings (lodging-houses) before assistance could be procured, and cutting off the retreat of the inmates.

Shortly before midnight the clock outside the Observatory at Greenwich was so altered that, instead of indicating twelve o'clock when the neighbouring clocks were striking that hour, it pointed to zero. By this arrangement the Astronomer Royal took the first step towards adopting "the universal day," and making the commencement of the astronomical day coincident with the civil day.

RETROSPECT

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART IN 1884.

LITERATURE.

PERSONAL biographies and autobiographies occupied a very important place in the year's literature; not only from their number, but from the prominent position of persons who either write of themselves or are written about.

The Memoirs of an ex-Minister, by Lord Malmesbury (Longmans), attracted much attention. The autobiography of a statesman of the first rank is in itself not of common occurrence, but it is rare indeed to find the work published in the lifetime of the author. The reasons for this are not far to seek, and the chiefest among them is a consideration for the feelings of others, which might be sorely wounded by a too prompt divulgence of anecdote or of fact. The present volumes, while replete with interest, can, we imagine, wound the feelings of no one; and the change of scene from England to the Continent, and from keen political conflict in the Houses of Parliament to the wild scenery of Heron Court, is especially grateful to the reader. The conclusion which will, we think, be generally arrived at on a perusal of this work is, that Lord Malmesbury's life has been singularly full of variety and of interest. Though he was prevented by reason of the somewhat strange views held by his father from ever obtaining a seat in the House of Commons, and so missed the earlier training which has been of such inestimable advantage to many of our hereditary legislators, he almost immediately after his succession to the title entered into most intimate relations with Lord Stanley, which were continued up to the time of the latter's death in 1869. In Lord Derby's two ministries of 1852 and 1858 9 he held the post of Foreign Secretary, and was also Lord Privy Seal in Lord Derby's third administration, and in the first and a portion of the second administration of Lord Beaconsfield. Very interesting and instructive are the glimpses behind the scenes which the author occasionally affords us, more especially of the position taken up by Lord Derby on the question of Free Trade in 1852, and the consequent refusal of Lord Palmerston to join his Government, a refusal which has without doubt had far-reaching consequences for the Conservative party. These volumes moreover form a valuable sequel to the "Diary and Correspondence of the First Earl of Malmesbury."

The Correspondence and Diaries of the late Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, edited by Louis J. Jennings (Murray), in point of political and historical interest probably exceed in importance any others published during the year.

Not only are many of the letters both of Mr. Croker and his correspondents admirable as literary compositions, but they also deal with subjects of genuine interest not only to the student of history but also to the general reader.

Mr. Croker was born in 1780, and at the early age of twenty-eight he became Secretary to the Admiralty in Mr. Perceval's administration, retaining that post for the long period of twenty-one years, and only leaving the office in 1830 in consequence of the advent of Earl Grey and the Whigs to power.

During that time, and indeed to the end of his life, he was thrown in contact with many of the foremost men of the day. With the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, in particular, he was on terms of peculiar intimacy, an intimacy which in the former case lasted till the death of the great Duke in 1852, and in the latter was destined to be rudely broken by the legislation of 1846.

The political intrigues which preceded the formation of Mr. Canning and Lord Goderich's cabinets in 1827 are, as may be believed, the subject of much interesting correspondence, and throw fresh light on the state of parties at that time.

Altogether we cannot doubt that these volumes will have the effect of raising Mr. Croker in the estimation of the reader. He has hitherto suffered much from political caricature, and has been the subject of illnatured and mendacious gossip which, in the absence of authentic information, has passed current for fact. If these letters do nothing else, they will at least show that few men have been more undeservedly maligned than the writer.

It is twenty-five years since Mountstuart Elphinstone died, but the record of his distinguished life which Sir E. Colebrooke has given us (Murray) is as important now as it would have been if published long ago. Especially is it useful at the present moment to see what one who so largely assisted in the formation of our Indian Empire thought of such questions as the rights of natives; the kind of government suited to the country; and the desirability of annexations. Sir E. Colebrooke's work is founded on the Indian journals and the official and other correspondence freely confided to him, and his task has been done with the most adequate taste and skill-there is nothing confidential or personal printed that should not have been made public, and yet all that is necessary for tracing the growth of character and for understanding the career of the great statesman is frankly laid before us.

The public part of Lord Elphinstone's life belongs to history, and as far as the Mahratta wars are concerned, in which he played so important a part, especially to Indian history; but there is much in these volumes of interest to those who are not students of that subject. "He was essentially a man of thought as well as of action," says his biographer, "for his love of letters and his thirst for knowledge were intense." The lines of the Persian poet whom he delighted in were the motto taken and acted on throughout his life :

"O Hafiz! do not allow your life to be passed in vain ;
Strive and obtain some result from your life."

And in the midst of a busy career of responsibilities of every kind he found time for a daily study of the classics, and for omnivorous reading of all kinds. The Strachey correspondence is among the most interesting of the book,

which is full of every kind of human interest; for "the forgetfulness of self, which made Lord Elphinstone so truly public-minded, was the charm of his private life, and constituted a character at once to be admired and loved."

The two volumes on Thomas Carlyle giving his life in London from 1839-1881 (Longmans), which Mr. Froude has brought out, complete the series. We may say at once that there is nothing in them to make one reverse the judgment formed by the perusal of the previous seven; and much repetition of petty incidents makes the reading somewhat tedious. That Carlyle should never have married-being too much occupied in "getting life lived" to have time for any closeness of personal relationship with its inevitable demands-is the verdict on his domestic life that no one can avoid arriving at. The incident in the opening volume of the burning of a volume of the "French Revolution," and his conduct under such an ordeal, bring out how heroic he could be in important things, and offers a strange contrast to the want of heroism-nay, the pitiable loss of self-control-with which he met the smaller details of everyday life. The limitations, too, of his intellectual character in his bitter judgments of men for whose opinions he had no sympathy are brought out here as in former volumes, showing a strange lack of imagination; but, on the other hand, when his temperament and character were in accord with his mental perceptions, then we get the clearness of vision of a seer, expressed in language of rugged force startling in its revelations.

To many minds of this generation, not wanting in power either, the struggle between instinct and reason, between the bias of sympathy and intellectual truth, is often a severe one; but Carlyle was torn by no such conflict; mind and emotion ran together in a deep and narrow channel, the banks of which were far too high to admit of any divergence of course.

There is little sympathy with Mr. Froude apparently in the way in which he has fulfilled the difficult trust confided to him. That he should have waited longer, and digested his material, finally giving to the world a record that would not have injured the reputation of a man whom it had elevated into a hero, and worshipped as such, is the remark so frequently heard. It is a difficult question to solve, and undoubtedly much of the reading he has provided us with makes one shrink with regret from the handling in minute detail of personal relationships; but, on the other hand, there is a conscientiousness about the record which one feels is hardly ever attained in biographies, and which can certainly not be attained without the attendant drawback pervading much that is painful.

The closing chapters of the second volume in which Carlyle's end is foreshadowed are written with great tenderness, and the account of the important trust committed to him, and how he dealt with it from the first, can only decide us in thinking that Mr. Froude, though he may have committed an error of judgment, has at least acted as he has done, in giving to the world everything concerning his friend, from the conviction that Carlyle had thereby to gain rather than to lose; and, indeed, when one thinks that everything has really been given, one can only ask what life is there of all we know in public or private which could stand the test as Carlyle's life has done.

The Life of F. D. Maurice, edited by his son (Macmillan), ought to have appeared some years since if it was to meet with the enthusiasm which for long encircled anything connected with his name.

But Maurice's reputation was one of those founded on a personality, and when that is the case it behoves a biographer not to wait until the impressions